Paul Expresses His Anxiety and Exposes His Adversaries. (Gal. 1:6-10)

Paul strikes while the iron is hot. God had called them in His grace, and saved them from their sins. Now they are moving from grace back into Law. They are abandoning liberty for legalism! And they are doing it so quickly, without consulting Paul, their “spiritual father,” or giving time for the Holy Spirit to teach them. They have become infatuated with the religion of the Judaizers, just the way little children follow a stranger because he offers them candy. “The grace of God” is a basic theme in this letter. Grace is simply God’s favor to undeserving sinners. The words “grace” and “gift” go together, because salvation is the gift of God through His grace. The Galatian believers were not simply “changing religions” or “changing churches” but were actually abandoning the very grace of God! To make matters worse, they were deserting the very God of grace! God had called them and saved them; now they were deserting Him for human leaders who would bring them into bondage.

I. The Judaizers were perverting the Gospel of God.(Gal. 1:6–7)

6 I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, 7 which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.

A. The Judaizers claimed to be preaching “the Gospel,” but there cannot be two gospels, one centered in works and the other centered in grace.

We must never forget that the Christian life is a living relationship with God through Jesus Christ. A man does not become a Christian merely by agreeing to a set of doctrines; he becomes a Christian by submitting to Christ and trusting Him. You cannot mix grace and works, because the one excludes the other.

Salvation is the gift of God’s grace, purchased for us by Jesus Christ on the cross. To turn from grace to Law is to desert the God who saved us. Like the cultists today, the Judaizers would say, “We believe in Jesus Christ-but we have something wonderful to add to what you already believe.” As if any man could “add” something better to the grace of God!

B. The deserting and perverting of the Gospel.

The word translated “pervert” in Galatians 1:7 is used only three times in the New Testament. The word could be translated “to reverse.” In other words, the Judaizers had reversed the Gospel-they had turned it around and taken it back into the Law! To them, the Law and the Gospel went together.

What was this doing to the Galatian Christians? It was troubling them (Gal. 1:7). This verb “trouble” carries with it the idea of perplexity, confusion, and unrest. You get some idea of the force of this word when you see how it is used in other places. “Trouble” describes the feelings of the disciples in the ship during the storm. It also describes the feelings of King Herod when he heard that a new King had been born.

C. God’s grace involves something more than man’s salvation.

We not only are saved by grace, but we are to live by grace. We stand in grace; it is the foundation for the Christian life. Grace gives us the strength we need to be victorious soldiers. Grace enables us to suffer without complaining, and even to use that suffering for God’s glory.

When a Christian turns away from living by God’s grace, he must depend on his own power. This leads to failure and disappointment. This is what Paul means by “fallen from grace” moving out of the sphere of grace into the sphere of Law, ceasing to depend on God’s resources and depending on our own resources.

II. Exposing the Judaizers. (Gal. 1:8–10)

8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed. 10 For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.

A. The Judaizers are identified by the false gospel that they preached.

The test of a man’s ministry is not popularity, or miraculous signs and wonders, but his faithfulness to the Word of God. Christ had committed the Gospel to Paul, and he, in turn, had committed it to other faithful servants. But the Judaizers had come along and substituted their false gospel for the true Gospel, and for this sin, Paul pronounced them accursed.

Paul intensified the contrast between himself and his Galatian opponents by pronouncing a curse upon anyone who proclaimed a counterfeit gospel. The fact that Paul issued this condemnation in the strongest words possible and then repeated it for emphasis makes this one of the harshest statements in the entire New Testament. It doesn’t set well today. Our modern ear accustomed to tolerance at any price and a doctrine of God lacking any notion of judgment and wrath.

B. The false motives that they practiced.

Paul’s enemies accused him of being a compromiser and “adjusting” the Gospel to fit the Gentiles. They said, “When Paul is with the Jews, he lives like a Jew; but when he is with the Gentiles, he lives like the Gentiles. He is a man-pleaser, and therefore you cannot trust him!” But in reality, it was the false teacher who was the man-pleaser.

Paul exposes the false teachers as the compromisers, going back to Old Testament practices so that they would not be persecuted by the Jewish people. Paul was definitely not a man-pleaser. His ministry did not come from man, nor did his message come from man. Why, then, should he be afraid of men? Why should he seek to please men? His heart’s desire was to please Christ.

C. Paul was not a politician; he was an ambassador.

Paul’s task was not to “play politics” but to proclaim a message. These Judaizers, on the other hand, were cowardly compromisers who mixed Law and grace, hoping to please both Jews and Gentiles, but never asking whether or not they were pleasing God.

The Judaizers accused Paul of promoting lawlessness because he preached the Gospel of the grace of God; so in this section, Paul explains the relationship between the grace of God and practical Christian living. He shows that living by grace means liberty, not bondage; depending on the Spirit, not the flesh; living for others, not for self; and living for the glory of God, not for man’s approval.